Obama's New Talking Point: Obamacare Is Just Like a New iPhone, or Something

Both President Obama and his HHS Secretary Kathleen Sidious have tried out an odd talking point in defense of the badly managed Obamacare rollout:

"I clearly have an iPad, and I also have an iPhone, and about ten days ago got the prompt that the operating system had changed and did I want to upgrade to the new operating system, and so I did, on both my iPad and my iPhone,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hours before the new insurance exchanges went live, building on a metaphor tested late last week by one of her top deputies, Gary Cohen, and then other senior administration officials in briefings with reporters.

“And then about five days after that, I got the second prompt saying, ‘Well, there’s a little problem with the iOS 7 system and now we have a ‘new’ new upgrade and why don’t you re-upgrade your upgrade,’” the secretary said.

OK, we think we know where this is going.

“Apple, you know, has a few more resources than we have to roll out technology, and a few more people who’ve been working on the system for a while, and no-one is calling on Apple to not sell devices for a year or to, you know, get out of the business because the whole thing is a failure.”

Wait, Apple has more resources than the federal government? Didn't President Obama declare just this week that Congress should pass a spending resolution because the federal government is the nation's largest employer? Why yes, he did.

And in keeping with the broad ramifications of a shutdown, I think it's important that everybody understands the federal government is America's largest employer. More than 2 million civilian workers and 1.4 million active duty military serve in all 50 states and all around the world.

The president said that in the deep, misty past of...yesterday.

Obviously, then, the federal government is larger than Apple. Just as obviously, the federal government has had three years to plan for Obamacare's rollout. Yet the rollout is still full of epic fail and major parts of the law have been delayed despite there being no language in the law that allows for those delays.

There is another obvious difference between iPhones and Obamacare. Namely, no one is forcing anyone to buy an iPhone under threat of fines or jail time.